Cancer
by imfreakinorange
Summary: This takes place duringafter 'Acceptance' where Cameron is with the woman who she refused to accept had Lung Cancer.


She sat on the edge of the bed, the laser from the pulse ox bit the darkness as the clip bit her finger. Intravenous lines haphazardly thrown to the side as the tube ran into her left arm, disappearing under the sleeve of the gown. The arterial line disappeared as well, hidden beneath the leads from the EKG. She sighed and the monitor bleeped as her O2 Sat fell another degree. The light board still held its faint glow from the other side of the room as she watched the medical personnel walk about the halls through the glass walls. Two in the morning, never a better time to find out you were dying.

Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Halfway through her second year of medical school, she tuned out the rest of the doctor's speech. Dr. Cameron was nervous, she surmised. Her hands had rung in front of her after she placed the chart, _her_ chart, on the metal table next to the bed, raised at 30 degrees. Cameron had looked into her eyes, for only a split second before turning away and forcing herself into 'doctor mode'.

She knew the physician, she thought suddenly as she watched Cameron calmly explain her options. Allison had been a couple of classes ahead of her in college and then in medical school. She didn't know her well, they had never spent a night in a French Restaurant talking over drinks, never gone to the movies as friends, never even glanced at each other in the Laundry room. But, it was something. She knew Cameron, seen her gently rap her pencil against her desk in Orgo.

She smiled for a moment thinking of how different it all have been before that moment, before she looked up from her bare feet and painted green toes to see Allison's empathic face. No, not empathic, that was pity. The smile was gone.

"I'm sorry," Cameron had said when the silence grew. The woman took a deep breath and wondered when the nasal cannula had been attached to her face. They looked at each and she could tell that the doctor was finished. The speech, well practiced, recorded and rehearsed, was finished. Cameron tried to think of a comforting gesture, but had never gotten so far before. A moment after the diagnose the patient would usual begin to cry, but she just sat there. Cameron could tell she was barely listening and made a quick move to pat her hand as she stood to leave.

The woman just sat there, feeling the warmth on Cameron's hand as she left. She waited for a click, but the door remained open slightly. Two in the morning and she wasn't even tired. Sleep seemed far away, a foreign thing that she was not meant to possess. She closed her eyes expecting silence, but there was none. The monitor behind her beeped with every beat of her heart. She turned and read the stats again and again. BP 110/75, O2 94, HR 76 with a steady stream of Q…RS…T waves. Up and down, like the ocean. Trapped in an ocean, drowning.

So clinical.

She leaned back, lifting her numb, cold legs on the warm sheets. She leaned back and listened as footsteps approached the bed. She closed her eyes, _she was asleep_, she told herself. Repeating it enough that she began to believe it, even in her still fully awake mind. The warm hands pressed against her cold wrist as the nurse took her pulse despite the numbers written in stark red lettering behind the mechanical bed. A moment of silent anticipation and she felt a pressure on her upper arm. She tried to relax, give the appearance of slumber, but her back and abdomen remained tight against the hard bed. _Dystonic_. A word in her far away mind.

"Hey." She heard from the anonymous body standing next to her. She didn't speak, finding no words to say. Her heart rate rose a degree and the nurse pressed on, despite any signs that her patient was asleep.

"Can you give me a pain rating?" the nurse asked. There was a moment where her patient held her breath. Silence, darkness continued. The nurse gathered up her equipment, ready to leave the disgruntled woman.

"Seven," the woman said and turned slightly. The nurse frowned, the number too high to be comfortable.

"I'll get you something," the nurse said and the woman sighed again turning again so that her back was facing the door. The thin gown left her back exposed, her bottom, thankfully, covered by underwear. Her spine, curved slightly, poked through her skin, ribs exposed by weeks of weight lose. Heart rate steady, years of medical text rushing through her throbbing body. Lubb dubb, lubb dubb. Blood rushing from the body, dead and useless, circulating through the heart and out through the right ventricle to the lungs to restore the anucleated cells back to life, to give life. Life.

Small Cell Lung Cancer

It sounded so innocuous. Small: minute, minor, trivial… deadly.

She closed her eyes and licked her lips. A small tug on her left arm and she smiled inwardly. The snap of latex. The cold washed spread through her arm, toward her chest, metallic taste reaching her tongue just as the God of Sleep reached her temporal lobe.

Silent footsteps away.

It had only been a cough.


End file.
